Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

Sir Francis Edward Younghusband 1863-1942, British explorer, b. India. He explored Manchuria in 1886. The following year he journeyed from China to India, crossing the Gobi desert and the Mustagh Pass (alt. c.19,000 ft/5,791 m) of the Karakorum range. Lord Curzon , the British viceroy in India, sent Younghusband with a military expedition into Tibet in 1904, where he forced a treaty upon the Dalai Lama, opening Tibet to Western trade. Later he surveyed the Brahmaputra and Sutlej rivers and the upper reaches of the Indus. He three times tried and failed to scale Mt. Everest. His books include Heart of a Continent (1898), India and Tibet (1912), and Everest: the Challenge (1936).

Bibliography: See biography by G. Seaver (1953); P. Fleming, Bayonets to Lhasa (1961).

Younghusband, Sir Francis (1863–1942). Commissioned into the army, Younghusband transferred to the Indian Political Department in 1890. In its service, he visited Manchuria in 1886 and then made his way back to India in a pioneering journey across the Gobi Desert and the Karakoram Range. Service as a political officer in the Pamirs region included further exploration, as did his work as British commissioner to Tibet in 1902–4. His central Asian and Himalayan explorations led to his election as president of the Royal Geographical Society after his retirement in 1910 and he enthusiastically promoted Everest expeditions. Devout Christianity allied with an interest in Eastern mysticism also led him to promote understanding between different faiths.

Roy C. Bridges